US "Defeated Politically" in al-Anbar: Marine Report
1 US Soldier, 42 Others Dead in Violence
58% of Americans say the Iraq War has not been worth the loss of American lives.
A confidential Marine Corps intelligence report on al-Anbar Province concludes that there are no functioning governmental institutions there, that the vacuum is filled by groups such as al-Qaeda in Mesopotamia, and that the US has been defeated politically even if not militarily.
These conclusions have long been obvious to any close observer of the situation there. There was significant violence in Fallujah on Sunday, and it had even been destroyed by the US. Ramadi saw a firefight Saturday, and the whole city appears to be under constant siege by US forces. The Sunni Arab tribes of Anbar are openly agitating for Saddam Hussein to be released! There is no point in keeping all those US troops there. They will just steadily be blown up or picked off. Hold provincial elections, hand the keys of the cities to the new govenors, and withdraw over the horizon. The Shiites and Kurds will have to reach an accommodation with them, and it would be all to the good if they knew that the Americans were no longer going to try to keep the Sunni Arabs down for them.
The NYT says that the attempt of Abdul Aziz al-Hakim, leader of the Shiite bloc in parliament to fast-track through parliament approval of an 8-province southern confederacy is in danger of toppling the national unity government. Sunni MPs say they only signed on to the political process because they were promised that the constitution would be open to review and such issues as regional confederacies reconsidered. The revision of the constitution has not even begun, and al-Hakim seems to them to be side-stepping that process with his proposal.
Al-Hayat says that [Ar.] the 32 MPs of the Sadr Movement in parliament and members of the Fadhila (Virtue) Party all defected Sunday from the position of their coalition leader, Abdul Aziz al-Hakim. They joined the opposition to a system of loose federal government presiding over big super-Regions cobbled together from several existing provinces. Al-Hayat maintains that their rebellion halted progress of a bill introduced by al-Hakim that would recognize an 8-province Shiite confederal region in the South. They joined a boycott of the parliamentary session staged also by other, mainly Sunni parties: The Iraqi Accord Front, the National Dialogue Front, the Iraqi National List, the Reconciliation list, and the Liberation list. This protest caused the speaker of the house and his two deputies to postpone the broaching of the plan until two parliamentary committees-- the legislation committee and the committee on regions and provinces-- had a chance to study it.
An anonymous Kurdish MP told al-Hayat that the issue of federalism was decided with regard to Kurdistan, and any attempt to go back to centralized government would provoke the break-up of Iraq.
A painful realization is setting in that it is more and more likely that Iraq is going to be partitioned. Like Adnan Pachachi, I continue to resist it. I think Barzani will be reined in, and I think al-Hakim will be, too. But I have to admit that things don't look good.
US and Iraqi troops are trying to crack down on militiamen posing as police in Baghdad.
Guerrillas killed a US soldier Sunday evening, north of Baghdad.
Six bodies turned up in the river at Kut, victims of political violence. Al-Sharq al-Awsat says that altogether 14 bodies were found throughout Iraq.
Reuters reports on civil war violence on Sunday in Iraq, with at least 28 killed. (For a total of at least 43). Major incidents:
TUZ KHURMATO - Four oil workers from Iraq's biggest refinery at Baiji were killed by gunmen as they drove close to the northern town of Tuz Khurmato, hospital and police sources said. A fifth man was wounded. . .
BAGHDAD A car bomb exploded in the street as police were leaving [Karrada where they found an explosives cache], killing three and wounding 14 people, mostly policemen.
BAGHDAD - Three people were killed and 15 wounded when a bomb exploded in a popular market in Bab al-Sharji in central Baghdad, police said.
BAQUBA - Clashes between two Sunni and Shi'ite districts in the town of Baquba 65 km (40 miles) north of Baghdad killed five people and wounded 14, police said, adding that mortars had been fired during the violence.
BAQUBA - Gunmen killed police General Majeed al-Mani and two of his bodyguards while he was on a shopping trip in Baquba, police said.
FATHA - Iraqi soldiers killed four insurgents when they repelled an ambush on a road near the town of Fatha southwest of Kirkuk on Saturday, the Iraqi army said. . .
Samuel Bostaph on Bush's "Monsters, Inc.".
posted by Juan Cole @ 9/11/2006 12:24:00 AM
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Hakim's initiative and the flag saga are aimed at sabotaging the reconciliation conference which was due in mid-September and which the Kurds and the Iranians, via Hakim, have been delaying since May.
Polls have repeatedly shown that the people in the South are not only against a seperate South, they want to end the Provincial authority in favor of centralism (out of bitter experience with the antics of the Province Councils.)
Hakim's proposal offers a second route which avoids a referendum by giving the decision to a new South governing council formed from 'political leaders'presumably himself. Only his tiny mind can get away with a thing like this.
Even if the Southern region did become independent, who is going to rule it? The Kurdish warlords promptly entered a civil war after 1991 which lasted until the Iraq Nakba of 2003. How long would the Southern civil war last? Provinces are shifting to Sadr's control one by one: are the Sadrists going to hand them over to Hakim quitely?
The USA was duped by Hakim and the Kurdish warlords into believing Iraq can be occupied on the cheap with the help of Badr and the Peshmergas. The US has in the last year given up on that, and is reining in on both Hakim and the Kurds, but only after obscene amounts of damage to both Iraq and the USA.
And speaking of the Kurds... I haven't heard a great deal lately about what the Turks will do should the Kurds declare themselves an independent state, which their recent insistence on flying only the flag of Kurdistan suggests they have in mind. Presumably they are counting on the United States to intervene should the Turks carry out their threat to invade should this occur.
With an autonomous Southern Iraq allied with Iran, a Kurdistan at war with Turkey, and a full-blown eruption of Sunni resistance in what remains of Iraq, it is easy to see how things could go from horrible to apocalyptic in a very short space of time.
Iran's nuclear threat started as gift from U.S. : “In the heart of Tehran sits one of Iran's most important nuclear facilities, a dome-shaped building where scientists have conducted secret experiments that could help the country build atomic bombs. It was outfitted by the United States.
The Tehran Research Reactor represents a little-known aspect of the international uproar over the country's alleged weapons program. Not only did the United States provide the reactor in the 1960s as part of a Cold War strategy [the Shah was an ally against the Soviet Union] it supplied the weapons-grade uranium needed to power the facility -- fuel that remains in Iran...”
...fact probably well-known to most Commenters, but fresh article [11-SEP-06, Chicago Tribune] posted here for all those seeking to become Informed ~ as to the genesis of the so-called "IRAN Nuclear Problem" = IRAN M.A.D. deterrence strategy dilemma cum debate.
Here's a brain teaser. One I am not qualified to comment intelligently on but more than a few IC readers, not to mention Dr. Cole, should find this thought provoking...
Ayatollah al-Sistani and the end of Islam
By Spengler, Asia Times
Key excerpt:
Grand Ayatollah Ali al-Sistani, the definitive presence of traditional Shi'ite Islam, has warned that he "no longer has power to save Iraq from civil war", and has withdrawn from politics (see Iraq loses its voice of reason, Asia Times Online, September 6)....
More than any man alive, Sistani personifies the traditional life of Islam. The end of his mission implies that his followers are thrust onto the stage of the modern world in the cruelest form, in this case a civil war of attrition. Islam, as Sistani teaches it, cannot survive the shock.
Was it supposed to happen like this?
Blood borders:
How a better Middle East would look
Everybody keeps saying that Iraq might be partitioned. If I'm not mistaken, the country was patched together after WWI at Versailles, and before that the Iraq we know today was non-existent. But, you, Dr. Cole, would know more about that than I.
Anyway, why is it really such a bad thing if the country that we know as Iraq breaks up? Maybe there would be less bloodshed, and the peoples of the former country could settle down and begin to reconstruct their devastated territory, if that's possible. Could it be that the US still vainly perceives Iraq as a counterweight to Iran? Wouldn't it make more sense to let each area of Iraq go its separate way and then try to come to a modus vivendi with its neighbors?
Peace?
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